Planetary Observation Astronomy Lab

• Give a brief history of three of the Planets of the Solar System (I would pick Saturn, Mars, Venus. They are my favorites. Copy me or be original…just don’t pick Pluto. Also once you go to the outer solar system it gets hard to see any details. You can pick interesting objects in the solar system if you want to try something different. Some examples are the moons of Jupiter, Titan, or Ceres. It won’t affect your grade but I HIGHLY recommend Saturn. Venus is also very cool because it is essentially Earth…just 900 F)
• Include the theories of their formation, properties, and their composition
• Include their orbital position, unique features, and an active area of research. (An example would be Saturn’s rings, or tectonic activity on Venus.) Go into detail. Each planet needs to have an active area of research.
• 500-750 words

Observation

• Observe your planets from the MicroObservatory https://mo-www.cfa.harvard.edu/OWN/index.html
• Create a table of the properties of each object. This should include composition, orbital period, mass, distance from the Sun, and a fun fact column (As a template you can use the telescope log sheet as a reference)
• Include pictures of each object.

General

• Properly formatted and references cited
• Professionally written